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Wednesday, January 30, 2013

No, it wasn't a Topps short-print card you cynical jerks. The only short print I saw last year was a David Price that my son got in a Series 2 pack I bought him from the local card shop. I have no idea where that card is now, but I'll bet it's probably underneath his bed with a big crease in it. Nope, the card I'm talking about isn't even from a baseball set. Hell, it wasn't even from a card pack.

2012 was a definite lull in baseball card collecting for me. Perhaps you noticed. I've had a few of these over the years actually. Two I remember distinctly were in 84-85 and in 97-98. I can pinpoint these dates because my Topps sets from '85 and '97 were not really up to snuff for a long time. I'm pretty sure I got about 80% of all the 1997 Topps cards in my collection out of a large box of random cards I bought at a shop in Knoxville for twenty bucks on a business trip. And by box, I don't mean a box of packs or a storage box. I mean an actual cardboard box that used to hold supplies or Becketts or something. Skipping out on much of '84 and '85 sets was an absolute disaster about twenty years ago. I missed out on all those super high priced can't miss future Hall of Fame Rookies! Don Mattingly, Darryl Strawberry, Eric Davis, Doc Gooden, Roger Clemens, Mark McGwire! Ok, the disaster has somewhat lessened over time.

Even in periods without baseball cards I still had several money sinks at that time. In the '80s it was coins, Mad Magazines and Bill Cosby tapes. In the '90s it was gaming cards, comics, sci-fi books and a girlfriend. Yes, it is possible to have all four of those things at one time. You can probably guess last year's money sink. But back to the comics... Just like my baseball collecting habits have been a long plateau of excessiveness with a few lulls here and there, my comic reading/collecting has been just the opposite. Long periods of ignoring comics completely with a few short bursts of comics mania here and there.

My last burst of comic reading came about 10 years ago when an adaptation of the anime Battle of the Planets was released. If you don't know what that is, you may be familiar with the chopped up version that was syndicated in America called G-Force. If you don't know what that is, Google it for Pete's sake. G-Force was my very first taste of animated Japan and I loved it. When the comic came out I actually started a hold list at a local comic shop so I could get my dose of kindergarten TV nostalgia. That led me off into a few other titles like Fables, Planetary and just about everything Alan Moore ever did. Eventually my work schedule made it difficult to get to the comic shop every week and I fell off on my comic reading.

Then late last year I took my son to the dollar store for something or other. He went to the toy section as kids will tend to do and in that aisle was a box of comics. Two comics for a buck, plus a trading card. You could see the comics through the plastic bag and I found one that had an issue of Spawn vs. Batman on the back. Had to snag that one. Here's what the package looked like:

You can see the bonus card on the front in each pack. Most of the cards in the packages were stuff from the '90s but I got lucky on this one. The A-Team!

Then in another bag was an issue of Battle of the Planets. I had most of the run already but this was a Special Edition! Limited Edition! Limited to only 5000! All of which were now probably in the comic repacks! Well of course I had to get it. Limited edition variant cover for a buck! There was a problem...

Here's the card that was inside.

AAAAAAAHHHHH WHATTHEHELLISTHATTHING

Oh wait there'e a write up on the back. Apparently this thing is one of Rita Repulsa's Putty Clowns. I have never watched more than three seconds of any Power Ranger episode in my entire life so I don't really know what exactly that means other than that they are monsters (horrifying) made of putty (even more horrifying) that are dressed up like clowns (Ia, Ia, Cthulhu Fhtagn). So basically the Power Rangers go to a fair and Rita Evil attacks them with Nightmare Clowns and their WonderTwin powers activate and the Power Rangers kick the putty out ot them. I guess. Is this episode in YouTube? I never cared for Power Rangers but I am a fan of clown abuse.

The card slightly redeems itself with a trivia question on the back. "What name is given to the first 10 amendments to the Constitution? The answer is given is the form of a code where the number = the letter of the alphabet:

20 8 5 - 2 9 12 12 - 15 6 - 18 9 7 8 20 19

Coincidentally, 2085291212156189782019 is the amount of money lobbyists have thrown at Congress in order to get them to pass laws ensuring that the first 10 amendments to the Constitution don't mean a goddamn thing anymore.

How about one more horrifying thing to close out the post.

Here's the cover of that comic in the bag that I posted above. Long story short, it's the first issue and origin story of some long forgotten superhero from an oddball press. The cover looks like standard comic book fare. Hero in spandex battling an ugly monster who is menacing a damsel in distress. Ho hum. So I read the comic thinking it would be boring. You wanna know what is actually going on here? Ok, but hold on to your butts.

*SPOILER*

So the guy in the tights is in a science mishap and suddenly gains a super power. Anyone he touches with his bare hand is infected with a fungus that consumes them in minutes leaving a moldy fuzzy corpse. Ick.

*SUPER SPOILER*

That monster? THAT'S THE SAME GUY. He gets like that when he's really, really pissed off. Of course, the evil government who use the dude's powers for ill really, really piss him off halfway through the comic.

*OMG, DON'T EVEN READ THIS PART*

The chick that is being menaced? Is his girlfriend. Who ends up betraying him in the part where he gets pissed off. Dude totally EATS her! Gobbles her right up! Om Nom Nom! Doesn't even spit out the bones or nothin'! Holy Shucking Fit!

Comics were frickin' weird in the '70s man. Just as weird as kids' shows were in the '90s.

I can't write worth a flip right now. Other people are writing things though so go check them out. I met this dude @grogg on Twitter and now we're internet pals or something and he's writing things! Here's stuff about Topps! So go read the writing. Because I no English much good no more. Oh wait, I need content. Have a super quickie sketch card based off another card. Can you tell what card this is?

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Kids today have their Angry Birds and Justin Beiber and crap like that, but when I was a kid in the good ol' days we had quality entertainment. Like Pac-Man and Michael Jackson. Classy stuff. We also had our share of lame fads, like Cabbage Patch Kids. One year every girl at school had one of those ugly ass things that looked like a nylon panty stuffed with cotton balls with eyeballs stapled on. Lame fads bring about brilliant parodies however. Back when Topps was cool, they came up with a trading card set that mocked the dolls and pissed everyone's parents off. Garbage Pail Kids.

When I was a kid I went through a brief lull in card collecting in 1984-85 so I sadly missed out on the scarce Series 1 and 2. I bought these things up with a vengeance in 1986 when Series 3 came out. I continued to do so through 1987 and snapped up most of the set through Series 9. For some reason I never bought any Series 6 packs though. Maybe I lost interest for a bit, Maybe I was too obsessed with baseball and football cards, maybe the local Kay-Bee toys where I got most of my packs never got that series. Recently a completed Series 6 set finally fell in my lap, so why not show it off?

Series 6 runs from card number 207 to 250, so enjoy a sample from Series 5 and 7 as well.

So did these cards piss off my parents? Nope. My mom is a ninja wizard jedi and never let my weirdness shenanigans faze her at all. But they did enrage my aunt, however... Holy schnikes did Stoned Sean set her off! Bahaha! Nothing better than youthful rebellion. Maybe that's why I'm still rebelling in my 40's.

Saturday, January 26, 2013

Apologies for the delay but I've been drunk on Barves for most of the past two days. We got Justin Upton and still have Simmons, Teheran, Gilmartin, Graham and Gattis? Awww yiss.

Also apologies for no card scans of the Uptons. The PC with my scanner attached has took a dump and posts will be scarce until I sort things out. Also I can't seem to find any cards of Justin Upton. Instead have the consensus best internet meme that came out of the trade:

Monday, January 21, 2013

Topps is hyping the hell out of Series 1, but they got beat to the punch for the first baseball set released in 2013. Phungo Cards are back for another year! I know for a fact that Night Owl got a pack, not sure who else may have laid their hands on one. Forget all that SP nonsense in Topps flagship, this is some serious exclusive distributity right here!

My scanner is having some network difficulties and I taped the wrapper to the wall of my office already so I don't actually have a good picture of it. Oh well. Let's look at the cards.

Hunter Pence. Blah. Playing for the Giants! Double blah. Posey was out. This is a great example of super close cropping in order to hide the fact that the player was traded. You used to see this all over sets in the '70s, but nowadays if there's a big trade Topps will just SSSSP the card to drive team collectors insane.

OH GAWD. First a Giant, now a Cardinal. Carlos is an outfielder or in Turner Field, a shortstop. This is a poor start to the pack. If I didn't know any better I'd think they were put there on purpose. But Phungo packs are totally random and a Philly fan would never torment a Braves fan like that anyway.

NOW WE'RE TALKING! J-Hey! I loves me some J-Hey. I really need to go on COMC and scarf up all his cards while they are relatively cheap like I didn't do with Kris Medlen's cards last year. You can't even find a Medlen card anywhere anymore. Kris is going 30-0 in 2013 with a 0.42 ERA so I guess I missed the boat on that one.

CHIPPAH!!! Even the Philly Fans appreciate the Chippah. Hopefully Chipper continues to tweet madness about the Braves throughout 2013 and beyond. He's still tweeting madness this offseason but the ratio of baseball tweets to animal carcasses is much higher.

MOJO! Insert card of Padrographs and Mr. Phungo himself. Phungo may homebrew baseball card sets, but Padrographs has a mighty epic beard right there. Not sure who the winner is in that contest.

Phungo packs always have buyback cards. Here's a Bowman's Best Chippah card that is much much shinier and much MUCH Yellower in person.

Here's a super shiny Tyler Pastornipples Chrome Xfractor thingy from 2012 Bowman Platinum. It's not a rookie card even though he was a rookie last year because Bowman. Apparently there are at least three versions minimum on these prospect cards with plain foil, Chrome refractor and this Xfractor which has a vaguely squarish pattern when scanned but looks like you just lost a game of Yar's Revenge in real life.

Anothah Chippah! CHIPPAH HOT PACK! This one is from the 2012 Archives set with the nifty 1971 Topps design which just flat out does not look right on white thin card stock with no dinks and scratches and bad corners on the black border. Archives is what Lineage should have been. Actually it's what the entire 2012 Topps lineup should have been as it is seemingly the only '12 Topps product that is not on clearance at Target right now.

Vintage! Hokey Smoke it's a 1963 Topps HIGH number card! '63 high numbers are just as hard to find as those ugly ass artificially scarce '12 Heritage super short prints with the black & white and color photos reversed. Who's idea was that? Frank Bolling manned second for the Braves from '61 to '66 and was a two-time All-Star with the Braves. Sadly Frank's brother Milt passed away this past weekend.

I found a cheap partial set of 1999 Topps Traded today, and sorting that set made me want to do a want list for the base set and someone on Twitter told me to post it to the interwebs so I did and here it is. Can you tell it's after midnight on a Saturday Night?

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

New year, new opportunities to start anew. New and improved! Or new at least. Oh wait, I don't really want to collect new things this year, I want to collect oldy moldy worthless crap. Oh well, it's new to someone out there. Like this card here:

This card is from the 1993 Skybox DC set. It came in that gigantic box 'o non-sports junk that I picked up a few weeks ago. If there's one thing I really learned from going through that box it's that I really don't like comic cards. There were several sets based on comic lines in there and I didn't really like any of them. Granted, most were '90s cheese based on superhero comics. Never been a fan of roided out dudes in tights. I liked horror and space comics when I was a kid (along with Mad Magazine which is a whole other ball of wax) and graduated to independent and underground comix when I got older. Mainstream stuff I didn't care for unless it was on the fringe like Swamp Thing or Howard the Duck. So looking through a pile of cheesy superheros on cheesy cardstock featuring a cheesy early-90's design didn't do a damn thing for me. Until.... I came across this card.

Sandman was a comic in DC's Vertigo line. The line debuted the same year as this trading card set in 1993. It was designed to publish more edgy, adult comics so the boobies and gore could be segregated from the Panty-Wearing SupaHeroes so as not to upset the kiddies. Or maybe it was a straight marketing thing. Sandman had been around since '89 with the label "Suggested for Mature Readers" on it. How many comic book readers are really that mature. Says the guy who collects trading cards and ponies. Hey! I read comics too! I might even have an issue or two of Sandman.

Um, what I meant to say is I might need an issue or two of Sandman. I've read the series (although one of two of the earlier books may have been read while chilling in a Barnes & Noble) and this card has reminded me that it might be time for a re-read. Gotta do something to pass the time while I'm eagerly awaiting *heh* 2013 Topps *pffffft* S-Se-Seheries One - BAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAAAA! Aww, I knew I couldn't say that with a straight face. Uh oh, Dream's giving me a dirty look now. My punishment for mocking the Monopoly will be to have nightmares about super short printed Josh Hamilton cards. FOREVER.

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About Me

One man's tireless crusade to promote card collecting as an addictive alternative to more pharmacological pursuits. Remember kids: Do Drugs, Cards have gotten entirely too stupid. Or don't, see if I care when you RUIN YOUR LIFE FOREVER

Dayf the Blogger has a Posse

My original crappy neglected blog what I'm trying to resurrect this year

Note on the Blogroll

If you have a blog, and it ain't on here, LET ME KNOW! There are a lot of good blogs I'm missing out on. I'm also very forgetful and sometimes forget to put it on the list even if I do find a good one. If your blog is about cards or trading or sports in general I'll fit it in, but don't try to sneak your blog about politics or cats or crop rotation in the 14th century on here.